An Excerpt of Query XIV from the Notes on the State of Virginia (1781)

by Thomas Jefferson

It will probably be
asked, Why not retain and incorporate the blacks into the
state, and thus save the expence of supplying, by importation
of white settlers, the vacancies they will leave? Deep rooted
prejudices entertained by the whites; ten thousand recollections,
by the blacks, of the injuries they have sustained; new
provocations; the real distinctions which nature has made;
and many other circumstances, will divide us into parties, and
produce convulsions which will probably never end but in the
extermination of the one or the other race. -- To these objections, which are
political, may be added others, which are
physical and moral. The first difference which strikes us is that
of colour. Whether the black of the negro resides in the reticular membrane
between the skin and scarf-skin, or in the
scarf-skin itself; whether it proceeds from the colour of the
blood, the colour of the bile, or from that of some other secretion, the
difference is fixed in nature, and is as real as if its
seat and cause were better known to us. And is this difference
of no importance? Is it not the foundation of a greater or less
share of beauty in the two races? Are not the fine mixtures of
red and white, the expressions of every passion by greater or
less suffusions of colour in the one, preferable to that eternal
monotony, which reigns in the countenances, that immoveable veil of black
which covers all the emotions of the other race? Add to these, flowing hair, a
more elegant symmetry of form, their own judgment in favour of the whites,
declared by their preference of them, as uniformly as is the preference of the
Oranootan for the black women over those of his own species. The circumstance
of superior beauty, is thought worthy attention in the propagation of our
horses, dogs, and other domestic animals; why not in that of man? Besides those
of colour, figure, and hair, there are other physical distinctions proving a
difference of race. They have less hair on the face and body. They secrete less
by the kidnies, and more by the glands of the skin, which gives them a very
strong and disagreeable odour. This greater degree of transpiration renders
them more tolerant of heat, and less so of cold, than the whites. Perhaps too a
difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus, which a late ingenious
experimentalist has discovered to be the principal regulator of animal heat,
may have disabled them from extricating, in the act of inspiration, so
much of that fluid from the outer air, or obliged them in expiration, to part
with more of it. They seem to require less sleep. A black, after hard labour
through the day, will be induced by the slightest amusements to sit up till
midnight, or later, though knowing he must be out with the first dawn of the
morning. They are at least as brave, and more adventuresome. But this may
perhaps proceed from a want of forethought, which prevents their seeing a
danger till it be present. When present, they do not go through it with more
coolness or steadiness than the whites. They are more ardent after their
female: but love seems with them to be more an eager desire, than a tender
delicate mixture of sentiment and sensation. Their griefs are transient. Those
numberless afflictions, which render it doubtful whether heaven has given life
to us in mercy or in wrath, are less felt, and sooner forgotten with them. In
general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than
reflection. To this must be ascribed their disposition to sleep when abstracted
from their diversions, and unemployed in labour. An animal whose body is at
rest, and who does not reflect, must be disposed to sleep of course. Comparing
them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me,
that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as think
one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the
investigations of Euclid; and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and
anomalous. It would be unfair to follow them to Africa for this investigation.
We will consider them here, on the same stage with the whites, and where the
facts are not apocryphal on which a judgment is to be formed. It will be right
to make great allowances for the difference of condition, of education, of
conversation, of the sphere in which they move. Many millions of them have been
brought to, and born in America. Most of them indeed have been confined to
tillage, to their own homes, and their own society: yet many have been so
situated, that they might have availed themselves of the conversation of their
masters; many have been brought up to the handicraft arts, and from that
circumstance have always been associated with the whites. Some have been
liberally educated, and all have lived in countries where the arts and sciences
are cultivated to a considerable degree, and have had before their eyes samples
of the best works from abroad. The Indians, with no advantages of this kind,
will often carve figures on their pipes not destitute of design and merit. They
will crayon out an animal, a plant, or a country, so as to prove the existence
of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation. They astonish you with
strokes of the most sublime oratory; such as prove their reason and sentiment
strong, their imagination glowing and elevated. But never yet could I find that
a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never see
even an elementary trait, of painting or sculpture. In music they are more
generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for tune and time, and they
have been found capable of imagining a small catch. Whether they will be equal
to the composition of a more extensive run of melody, or of complicated
harmony, is yet to be proved. Misery is often the parent of the most affecting
touches in poetry. -- Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no
poetry. Love is the peculiar r&oe;strum of the poet. Their love is ardent, but it
kindles the senses only, not the imagination. Religion indeed has produced a
Phyllis Whately; but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published
under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The heroes of the Dunciad
are to her, as Hercules to the author of that poem. Ignatius Sancho has
approached nearer to merit in composition; yet his letters do more honour to
the heart than the head. They breathe the purest effusions of friendship and
general philanthropy, and shew how great a degree of the latter may be
compounded with strong religious zeal. He is often happy in the turn ot his
compliments, and his stile is easy and familiar, except when he affects a
Shandean fabrication of words. But his imagination is wild and extravagant,
escapes incessantly from every restraint of reason and taste, and, in the
course of its vagaries, leaves a tract of thought as incoherent and eccentric,
as is the course of a meteor through the sky. His subjects should often have
led him to a process of sober reasoning: yet we find him always substituting
sentiment for demonstration. Upon the whole, though we admit him to the first
place among those of his own colour who have presented themselves to the public
judgment, yet when we compare him with the writers of the race among whom he
lived, and particularly with the epistolary class, in which he has taken his
own stand, we are compelled to enroll him at the bottom of the column. This
criticism supposes the letters published under his name to be genuine, and to
have received amendment from no other hand; points which would not be of easy
investigation. The improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first
instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and
proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of
life. . . .

To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where
the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses,
to analysis by fire, or by solvents. How much more then where it is a
faculty, not a substance, we are examining; where it eludes the research
of all the senses; where the conditions of its existence are various and
variously combined; where the effects of those which are present or absent
bid defiance to calculation; let me add too, as a circumstance of great
tenderness, where our conclusion would degrade a whole race of men from the
rank in the scale of beings which their Creator may perhaps have given
them. To our reproach it must be said, that though for a century and a
half we have had under our eyes the races of black and of red men, they
have never yet been viewed by us as subjects of natural history. I
advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks, whether
originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are
inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind. It is not
against experience to suppose, that different species of the same genus,
or varieties of the same species, may possess different qualifications.
Will not a lover of natural history then, one who views the gradations in
all the races of animals with the eye of philosophy, excuse an effort to
keep those in the department of man as distinct as nature has formed them?
This unfortunate difference of colour, and perhaps of faculty, is a
powerful obstacle to the emancipation of these people. Many of their
advocates, while they wish to vindicate the liberty of human nature, are
anxious also to preserve its dignity and beauty. Some of these,
embarrassed by the question 'What further is to be done with them?' join
themselves in opposition with those who are actuated by sordid avarice
only. Among the Romans emancipation required but one effort. The slave,
when made free, might mix with, without staining the blood of his master.
But with us a second is necessary, unknown to history. When freed, he is
to be removed beyond the reach of mixture.